athletic body vs. athletic mind

Yesterday my daughter had a collision with a basketball and lost. Not catching it right, the ball jammed her fingers quite badly. Not having improved overnight, we set off to the hospital to have it x-rayed this morning. Luckily there was no fracture. Having to deal with injuries is of course second nature to me due to my own childhood spent with uncountable amounts of injuries. I am a pro taking care of it.

An interesting thought came to my while driving about that never occurred to me before. I have always thought about people being either athletic or not with variations in-between. J was given the perfect body for sports and the energy too, so how come that she does not care for it that much and can not excel? A few years ago she did Ballet. She was amazingly talented, but could not bring the needed focus. She already hated gym in second grade and dreaded the day it was in the schedule, complaining about being the slowest in the whole class. All this time I thought that if she would put her mind to it, she could be extraordinary at swimming or dancing, gymnastics or tennis. And that is exactly that, if she would/could put her mind to it.

All of a sudden it was clear to me, she has a athletic body, but she does not have an athletic mind. This took me so many years to see the obvious, even though I saw all the puzzle pieces. Now I am the exact opposite, I have never looked athletic, but I always have been. I have an athletic mind, I have the drive, the need and a very competitive streak. Unfortunately my mother - having neither athletic mind nor body - never allowed me to do any organized sports, but I roller skated, played soccer and biked every single day. When I was older and made enough money, I was doing so much and so many sports, some days I had to run from one training session to the next. The strange thing about this is, that it appears to be easier to overcome the not athletic body, if the mind really wants it, even if it is really hard. On the other hand, the best talent and physical prerequisite mean little, if the focus and determination are missing.

I have always envied people that have both, athletic body and mind, wished to be like that as well and thought - falsely - that if I put enough force into it, I could get there. But today I see that we might not be perfect athletes (unlike S), for opposite reasons, but we are creative, artistic and sociable. And so I will go on pushing my body where it does not want to go and also be more forgiving to J, who would just rather drape her athletic body over some pillows to devour kid lit.